Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 342 pages of information about Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools.

Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 342 pages of information about Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools.

While the good soul is thus explaining I become aware of a strange remote sound from without, a sound I recognize through memory of tropical dances, a measured clapping of hands.  But this clapping is very soft and at long intervals.  And at still longer intervals there comes to us a heavy muffled booming, the tap of a great drum, a temple drum.

“Oh! we must go to see it,” cries Akira; “it is the Bon-odori, the Dance of the Festival of the Dead.  And you will see the Bon-odori danced here as it is never danced in cities—­the Bon-odori of ancient days.  For customs have not changed here; but in the cities all is changed.”

So I hasten out, wearing only, like the people about me, one of those light wide-sleeved summer robes—­yukata—­which are furnished to male guests at all Japanese hotels; but the air is so warm that even thus lightly clad, I find myself slightly perspiring.  And the night is divine,—­still, clear, vaster than the nights of Europe, with a big white moon flinging down queer shadows of tilted eaves and horned gables, and delightful silhouettes of robed Japanese.  A little boy, the grandson of our host, leads the way with a crimson paper lantern; and the sonorous echoing of geta, the koro-koro of wooden sandals, fills all the street, for many are going whither we are going, to see the dance.

A little while we proceed along the main street; then, traversing a narrow passage between two houses, we find ourselves in a great open space flooded by moonlight.  This is the dancing-place; but the dance has ceased for a time.  Looking about me, I perceive that we are in the court of an ancient Buddhist temple.  The temple building itself remains intact, a low, long peaked silhouette against the starlight; but it is void and dark and unhallowed now; it has been turned, they tell me, into a schoolhouse.  The priests are gone; the great bell is gone; the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas have vanished, all save one,—­a broken-handed Jizo of stone, smiling with eyelids closed, under the moon.

In the centre of the court is a framework of bamboo supporting a great drum; and about it benches have been arranged, benches from the schoolhouse, on which the villagers are resting.  There is a hum of voices, voices of people speaking very low, as if expecting something solemn; and cries of children betimes, and soft laughter of girls.  And far behind the court, beyond a low hedge of sombre evergreen shrubs, I see soft white lights and a host of tall gray shapes throwing long shadows; and I know that the lights are the white lanterns of the dead (those hung in cemeteries only), and that the gray shapes are the shapes of tombs.

Suddenly a girl rises from her seat, and taps the huge drum once.  It is the signal for the Dance of Souls.

II

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Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.